
Class _Ll_l.fi 

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MEMOIR 



OF 



RUFUS CHOATE 



BY 



JOHN B. D. COGSWELL 



Reprinted from Volume III. of the Memorial Biographies of the 
New England Historic Genealogical Society 






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CAMBRIDGE 
JOHN WILSON AND SON 
SEnibersttg $rcss 
1884 



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Copyright, 1883, 
By the New England Historic Genealogical Society. 






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University Press: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



RUFUS CHOATE 



In March, 1633, John, son of Governor John Winthrop, 
with twelve men, began a plantation at Agawam, which 
in 1634 was incorporated as Ipswich by the General Court 
of Massachusetts. Its southern portion, long known as 
Chebacco, was created into a separate town in 1819, by 
the name of Essex. Ship-building was carried on upon 
the principal stream at least as early as 1668, and the 
" Chebacco boats " were long famous. Captain Barnsta- 
ble of the Ariel, in Cooper's " Pilot," hailed from " old 
Chebacco." 

John Choate, an immigrant from England, settled in 
Chebacco in 1645. His son Thomas settled on Hog Island, 
and, being the first resident there and a large farmer, was 
known as Governor Choate. A man of good sense and 
large influence, he represented Ipswich in the General 
Court in 1723-27, dying March 3, 1745. His son, Colonel 
John Choate, was born on Hog Island in 1697, and died 
in 1766. Seventeen years a member of the House of 
Representatives, and five of the Council, Justice of the 
Court of Sessions and Court of Common Pleas, and Judge 
of Probate, he was a leading citizen of the province. 
Elected Speaker in 1741, he was negatived by Governor 
Belcher. Francis, another son of Thomas Choate, was born 
on Hog Island in 1701, and died there October 15, 1777. 
He was prominent in church and town affairs. His second 
son, William, was the father of David Choate, born upon 



384 RUFUS CIIOATE 

Hog Island, November 29, 1757, who died March 26, 
1808. He inherited the island farm which is still owned 
by his descendants, but in 1800 he removed to the main 
land. David Choate, the father of Rufus, was, at times, 
a school-teacher in Ipswich. He was highly esteemed for 
his social talents, good sense, and judgment. He is un- 
derstood to have been a member of the State Convention 
called to consider the Federal Constitution, and to have 
advocated its adoption in a series of newspaper articles, 
sometimes ascribed to Chief-Justice Parsons. The state- 
ment shows, at any rate, the estimation in which his abil- 
ities were held. By his first wife David Choate had no 
children. October 11, 1791, he married Miriam, daugh- 
ter of Captain Aaron Foster, who bore him two daughters 
and four sons, and who survived him more than forty 
years, dying in 1853, at the age of eighty-one. Their son 
David, born November 29, 1796, died December 16, 1872. 
He was long engaged in school-teaching, was an active 
town and church officer, a member of both branches of 
the legislature, and distinguished for the moral and in- 
tellectual traits characteristic of his family. 

One of the daughters married Dr. Thomas Sewall, who, 
about 1808, succeeded another eminent physician, Dr. 
Reuben D. Muzzey, in practice at Essex. Dr. Sewall, 
some years after, removed to Washington, where he at- 
tained great distinction in his profession, his house be- 
coming the home of his famous brother-in-law, the subject 
of this memoir, during his various residences in that city. 

Fond tradition and affectionate eulogy preserve the 
memory of another son, Washington Choate, who, born 
January 17, 1803, died February 27, 1822, whilst a mem- 
ber of the Junior Class in Dartmouth College. His fair 
beauty, his sweet disposition, his extreme precocity and 
remarkable attainments were accompanied, we are told, 
by a sincere and fervent piety, which fitted him for the 
lofty service to which he had already determined to con- 



RUFUS CHOATE 385 

secrate his life. He was undoubtedly a young man of 
rare promise, thought by many to be in no way inferior 
to his brother Rufus, — who was fondly attached to him, 
and refused to be comforted for his loss. 

Rufus, the second son and fourth child of David and 
Miriam (Foster) Choate, was born upon the island " Tues- 
day, October 1, 1799, at 3 o'clock p.m." — according to 
the record made by his father in the Family Bible. Al- 
though the family removed to Essex village when Rufus 
was only six months old, the island farm continued to be 
cultivated by them, and frequent visits were made to it 
in a " dug-out." To his latest day Mr. Choate loved to 
repair there, and talk of his boyish work and sport upon 
that spot. Its scenery and associations became a distinct 
element in the formation of his character. His biographer 
wrote, in 1862 : — 

An arm of the sea flows pleasantly about it, and a little 
creek runs up to within twenty rods of the old dwelling, which 
stands on the hillside, hardly changed from what it was sixty 
years since, — of two stories, heavy-timbered, low-roomed, with 
beams across the ceiling, bare and weather-beaten, but with 
a cheerful southerly outlook towards the marshes, the sea, and 
the far-off rocky shore of Cape Ann. 

During- the War of the Revolution a British frig-ate hov- 
ered off the shore, and sent boats into the near harbor of 
Annisquam. When they approached Hog Island, all the 
people fled to the main land, save the wife of William 
Choate, grandmother of Rufus, who refused to leave, and 
remained with two little children, fearless and unharmed. 
During the War of 1812, British men-of-war were more 
than once seen uear the islands. The boy Rufus gazed 
with rapt eyes upon the Teneclos and the Shannon, " sit- 
ting like swans upon the water." 

In August, 1813, he went to Salem, when the remains of 
the brave Captain Lawrence of the Chesapeake were re- 
interred. The last battle-cry of the hero, "Don't give up 

9K 



38(3 RUFUS CHOATE 

the ship ! " rang in his ears. The opening sentence of 
Judge Story's famous oration, " Welcome to their native 
shores be the remains of our departed heroes ! ' seemed 
to him the grandest eloquence. He delighted in accounts 
of naval battles ; and, with his brother Washington and 
other boys, he fought them " o'er again." He was him- 
self the captain, the admiral ; and, above all things, he 
impressed upon his subordinates the duty of nailing the 
flag to the mast-head, never, never to be hauled down ! 

Indeed, the boyhood by the sea, the sight and sound 
of it in calm and storm, the fishing, the ship-building, 
the sea-stories and sea-fights, made an indelible impression 
upon this imaginative boy. His dream then was to be 
a sea-captain, — or better, himself a naval hero. And 
though the stronger passion for books, when it sprang up, 
dispelled that dream, yet to the last of earth he loved sail- 
ors and the sea. No man was more familiar with naval 
history, and the very manoeuvres of the vessels in our 
various naval engagements. His most brilliant and beau- 
tiful lecture " The Romance of the Sea " — in which he had 
incorporated much that he had seen and thought of and 
about the ocean, and its wonders and its mysteries — was 
stolen or lost after its delivery in New York, and has never 
reappeared. Said Richard H. Dana, the author of " Two 
Years Before the Mast," in his remarks at the Boston Bar 
meeting, after Mr. Choate's death : " I take for the moment 
a simile from that element which he loved as much as I 
love it, though it rose against his life at last." 

Although Rufus lost his father when he was only eight 
years old, his surroundings were pleasant and wholesome. 
His mother is described as " a quiet, sedate, but cheerful 
woman, dignified in manner, quick in perception, of strong 
sense and ready wit," whom her son was said to resemble 
" in many characteristics of mind and person." When 
she died, in 1853, he mourned her deeply, although she 
sank into a " timely grave." When in the Senate, in 



RTJFUS CHOATE 387 

1841, he wrote to his children : " Give best love to all at 
Essex. Go, especially, and give my love to grandmother, 
who was the best of mothers to your father, and help her 
all you can." To his son at Essex, about the same time, 
he wrote : — 

There is a place or two, according to my recollections of 
your time of life, in the lane, where real, good, solid satisfac- 
tion, in the way of play, may be had. . . . One half-hour, tell 
grandmother, under those cherished buttonwoocls, is worth a 
month under these insufferable fervors. 

Many passages might be selected from the orations of 
Mr. Choate, descriptive of the scenery of Ipswich and its 
vicinity, with which his youth was familiar. Many spots 
were identified with his early readings. Forty years after, 
in riding from Ipswich to Essex, he pointed out a rocky 
dell, saying, " There is the descent to Avernus." The 
poetic feeling was already developing. In manhood he 
was wont to relate that more than once, after driving his 
father's cow to pasture and throwing away his switch, he 
returned to pick it up again and place it under the tree 
from which he had stripped it, saying to himself, " Per- 
haps there is, after all, some yearning of nature between 
them still." 

For the lad was not exempt from the share of work 
which usually falls to the lot of New England farmer- 
boys. He was strong, active, and willing, and one stone- 
wall builder, at least, thought it a pity so good a worker 
should be sent to college. And to the master-workman 
the boy appreciatively said, " If ever I 'm a lawyer, I '11 
plead all your cases for nothing." But, as we have seen, 
he loved play, at which he was eager and indefatigable. 

The passion of his life, however, early disclosed itself 
in his absorbing devotion to reading. Before he was six 
years old he had devoured Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, 
and could repeat it from memory. A little while before 
his death, he borrowed the old clog-eared copy, which 



388 RUFTTS CHOATE 

refreshed the memories of the child's absorption in the 
grand allegory. Before he was ten, he had "pretty 
nearly exhausted ' : the heavy histories of the village li- 
brary — Rollin, Josephus, Plutarch, Hutchinson, &c. He 
read and re-read the Bible, and noted prophesies which 
foretold, he thought, Napoleon, then at the zenith of his 
power. He already sucked out the heart of books, as 
other boys fruit, and his wonderful power and tenacity of 
memory began already to be marked and commented 
upon. When in college, afterwards, he would read a chap- 
ter just before retiring, and on waking in the morning 
could repeat it correctly. He once recited in court a long 
passage from the Assembly's Catechism, saying, " May 
it please your Honor, my mother taught me this in my 
earliest childhood." 

As an illustration of the vivid impression which the 
books read in youth make upon a plastic mind, it is worth 
recording that when, in the trial of Albert J. Tirrell for 
murder, Mr. Choate broached somnambulism as the theory 
of the defence, he read a striking passage — containing an 
incident of a sportsman, who, in his sleep, attempted to 
kill his comrade — "from a good old book, which used to 
lie on the shelves of our good old fathers and mothers, 
and which they were wont devoutly to read. This old 
book is Hervey's Meditations, and I have borrowed it 
from my mother to read on this occasion." Tirrell was 
a somnambulist, and the suggestion that he had killed 
Maria Bickford in his sleep is said to have been made to 
Mr. Choate by his friends. This defence was much rid- 
iculed, and Choate was censured for adopting it, whilst 
the jury is said to have declared they acquitted Tirrell 
on entirely different grounds. But Mr. Choate, whose 
judgment in such matters was wellnigh infallible, de- 
fended Tirrell, in a subsequent trial for arson upon sub- 
stantially the same facts, upon the same ground, and the 
jury again acquitted Tirrell. It is altogether probable 



RUFUS CHOATE 389 

the evidence of somnambulism did impress the jury, and 
it is quite certain that the quaint passage from the Med- 
itations, read in boyhood and never forgotten, must 
have encouraged the great advocate in the maturity of 
his splendid powers, as well as lent a certain dignity to 
the novel and, at first blush, absurd theory. 

As a boy Choate was remarked for the same sweet- 
ness of temper, and mischievous, roguish love of fun, that 
characterized him in manhood. He doubtless received 
valuable impressions from intercourse as a child with Drs. 
Muzzey and Sewall, who both, at different times, resided 
in his mother's family. At the age of ten he commenced 
the study of Latin with Dr. Sewall, continuing it with 
the clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Holt, or the teachers of the 
district school. " Among these," says Mr. Choate's biog- 
rapher, " should be mentioned the Rev. Dr. William 
Cogswell," whose memoir appears in the first volume of 
this series of Memorial Biographies, and who taught the 
school during the successive winters of his Junior and 
Senior years in college. 

Completing his preparation for college in 1815, at the 
Academy in Hampton, New Hampshire, Rufus entered 
Dartmouth in the summer of that year, where he gradu- 
ated in course in 1819, when not quite twenty, — the 
youngest in the class with two exceptions. He is de- 
scribed " as a diffident, modest, beautiful boy, singularly 
attractive in person and manner, of a delicate frame, with 
dark curling hair, a fresh, ruddy complexion, a beautiful 
ingenuous countenance, his movements marked Avith a 
natural grace and vivacity, and his mind from the first 
betraying the spirit of a scholar." 

Chief-Justice Perley in his discriminating eulogy on 
Mr. Choate, pronounced at Dartmouth College, July 25, 
1860, says : — 

There he brought a mind burning with a thirst for knowledge, 
which death alone had power to quench, kindled with aspira- 



390 RUFUS CHOATE 

tions loft}-, but as yet undefined and vague, and stocked with an 
amount of general information quite remarkable for his years ; 
a physical constitution somewhat yielding and pliant, of great 
nervous sensibility, but equalled by few for endurance and 
elastic strength. He came pure from every taint of vice, gener- 
ous, enthusiastic, established in good principles, good habits, and 
good health. 

It is probable that the broken manner of his preparation 
for college, and his own sensibility, prevented attention 
from being fixed upon his extraordinary merit during his 
first half-year or so. These defects could not long keep 
him in the background. His quickness of apprehension, 
love of acquisition, grasp of memory, natural command 
of beautiful and vivid expression, with extraordinary 
capacity for application, quickly placed him in advance 
of all competitors. In his second year, he had already 
entered upon a course of thorough study, independent 
of the class curriculum. He read in all directions — 
poetry, romance, the classics, general literature. He 
was too eager and busy to mingle much in the sports 
of the playground, but he was never churlish or in- 
hospitable. All loved him, none envied him. He was 
librarian of the Social Friends, one of the two literary 
societies of the College, a position which gave him un- 
usual facilities for gratifying his omnivorous love of 
books, and doubtless aided in creating and confirming 
the habit which once chained him to the shelves of a 
w T ell-known New York bookseller, for nine hours upon the 
stretch, without food or drink. 

The four years of his academic course were coincident 
with the struggle between the College and the Univer- 
sity, terminating in the complete triumph of the College 
through the decision pronounced in its favor by the 
Supreme Court of the United States at its term in Febru- 
ary, 1819. Daniel Webster had won such pre-eminent 
glory in the argument of the cause, that Joseph Hopkin- 



IiUFUS CHOATE 391 

son, associate-counsel with him, wrote to President Brown : 
" I would have an inscription over the door of your build- 
ing : Founded by Eleazer Wheelock, Refounded by Daniel 
Webster." Webster had thus become not only the most 
distinguished graduate of the College, but the graduate 
to whom it was believed to owe its very existence. 
Choate had already heard Webster, in the famous trial of 
the Kennistons, at Ipswich in the autumn of 1817, and 
had become profoundly impressed with the genius of that 
extraordinary man, who was to exercise so great an in- 
fluence over his own career. 

There had been no difference of opinion to whom 
should be awarded the highest honors of the Class of 1819. 
But Choate had been overworked, and his health broke 
down towards 'the close of his Senior year. The six weeks 
before Commencement were passed by him upon a sick 
bed, attended by the assiduous care of his family friend, 
Dr. Muzzey, now a professor at Dartmouth. There had 
been fears that he would be unable to deliver the valedic- 
tory. The report of his extraordinary love of study and 
rare attainments had gone abroad, and public sympathy 
had been roused by the rumor of his dangerous illness. 
Thus, when he came upon the rostrum, pallid, attenuated, 
his dark beauty seemed stamped with the seal of ap- 
proaching mortality, his eye was thought to burn with 
an unearthly lustre, and his voice sounded mellow with 
a pathos, fit to melt into the melody of the heavenly 
choir. So thought the matrons and maids in the old 
village church ; but before him stretched away forty 
years of intense study, struggle, forensic agony, and tri- 
umph. From that hour, a brilliant future was foretold 
for the gifted, romantic-looking student. 

At this Commencement were present many distin- 
guished friends of the College, eager to hail its resurrec- 
tion. Webster was there ; and Choate, in the famous 
eulogy, recalls his meeting with him on that occasion. 



392 EUFUS CHOATE 

Ex-governor and ex-Chief-Justice Jeremiah Smith, who 
also had been of counsel for the College in the State 
courts, was accompanied by his beautiful and accom- 
plished daughter Ariana, who naturally selected the per- 
formance of "young Mr. Choate" as "really admirable," 
— adding : " This young man is a fine scholar, a hard 
student, and uncommonly interesting." 

Choate remained for a year at Dartmouth as tutor, 
successful and beloved as a teacher, and vastly extending 
the area of his own knowledge. James Marsh, the well- 
known metaphysician, afterwards president of the Uni- 
versity of Vermont, was a colleague in tutorship, — to 
whom Choate wrote ten years later, just after his election 
to Congress: "I more than once, while it was raging about 
me, wished myself a tutor in the Indian Charity School, 
upon $ 350 per annum, teaching the first book of Livy 
to the class, and studying with you that dreadful chapter 
of Mitford about the dialects." 

The venerable Judge Nathan Crosby of Lowell, who 
graduated in the Class of 1820, just as Choate's connec- 
tion with the College was terminating, writes of him : 
" The ideal scholar, and the pride of the College, no one 
had ever so completely won the admiration of the Faculty, 
of his fellow-students, and of the people of Hanover." 

It is proper to guard the reader against the conclusion 
that, either in his youth or manhood, Mr. Choate could 
ever justly be charged with affectation or a fondness for 
theatrical display. Though he probably became conscious, 
early in his career, of the possession of great talents, 
yet those who knew him best bear strongest testimony 
to his unassuming manner and unfeigned modesty. But 
such was his fresh, even blooming, beauty in youth, — so 
picturesque, and latterly even so tragic, his appearance in 
after life, — so intense was his absorption in the prepara- 
tion, and so completely did he lose his identity in the 
presentation of his cause, whatever it might be, — that on 



EUFUS CHOATE 393 

every stage he appeared the " well-graced actor," whom 
all eyes devoured. For his own part, Mr. Choate ever 
delighted to recur to the happy and profitable days of his 
sojourn at college. To his son, Rufus, so well-beloved, 
and for whom he hoped so much, he wrote, whilst a 
student at Amherst College: "My college life was so 
exquisitely happy, that I should love to re-live it in my 
son. The studies of Latin and Greek — Livy, Horace, 
Tacitus, Xenophon, Herodotus, and Thucydides especially 
— had ever a charm beyond expression; and the first 
opening of our great English authors — Milton, Addison, 
Johnson — and the great writers for the reviews, made 
that time of my life a brief, sweet dream. It created tastes, 
and supplied sources of enjoyment which support me to 
this hour — in fatigue, ill-health, and low spirits." 

Again he says to his boy, of college life : " It glides 
away so fast, and is so delightful a portion of the whole 
term of life, that I should envy every clay and hour. I 
prized mine. Yet now, as the poet says, it is my grief 
that I prized it no more." 

Of that precious springtime of youth and the begin- 
ning of culture, Mr. Choate was thinking in his lecture 
of March, 1856, before the Mercantile Library Association. 
Speaking " of the time, say from 1812 to 1820," when 
Byron and Wordsworth and Scott, Rogers and Coleridge 
and Madame de Stael, were entrancing the youth of the 
period, his thoughts flit back twoscore years to Hanover 
and the Connecticut, and he says : — 

You who can remember this will sigh and say, 

" 'Twas a light that ne'er can shine again 
On life's dull stream." 

So might you say, whatever their worth intrinsically : for 
to you, to us — read in the age of admiration — of the first pulse 
of the emotions beating unwontedly, — associated with college 
contentions and friendship ; the walk on the gleaming, Rhine- 



394 EUFUS CHOATE 

like, riverside ; the seat of rock and moss under the pine singing 
of Theocritus : with all fair ideals revelling in the soul before 

" The trumpet-call of truth 
Pealed ou the idle dreams of youth," — 

to you the}' had a spell beyond their value, and a place in your 
culture that nothing can share. 

Choate's industry, ambition, and fervor of temperament 
were too marked to permit his wasting long time in " idle 
dreams ; ' : and the " trumpet-call," is clearly pealed in a 
letter written him in March, 1820, by his old teacher, now 
his brother by marriage, Dr. Sewall of Washington. 

Dr. Sewall writes to the young tutor, not yet twenty- 
one, about the speeches, in Congress, of Barbour, Pink- 
ney, Otis, Clay, Lowndes ; about Judge Story ; of his 
own great and growing intimacy with Webster, who ex- 
presses an interest in Choate, and invites him to visit 
him, — whom " Rufus " will find " a friend, a companion, 
and equal." The Doctor supposes that Choate's funds 
"must be nearly exhausted." He strongly urges him to 
commence professional study immediately upon the close 
of the present academic year, — the study of Divinity, if 
he can bring his " feelings to such a course. ... I am not 
without a strong hope that, whatever you engage in for 
the present, you will finally be called to devote those 
talents, which God has distinguished you with in so emi- 
nent a degree, to that cause which will ultimately swallow 
up all others." If he cannot come to this " for the pres- 
ent," then he advises him to commence the study of law 
in Webster's office in Boston. It is quite probable that, 
aside from his views of duty, Dr. Sewall may have 
thought Choate's powers eminently fitted for usefulness 
in the pulpit ; and one can imagine in him another White- 
field of a different type. One sentence of Dr. Sewall's letter 
may well be quoted here as illustrative of Mr. Choate's 
character, since doubtless it is substantially correct : " I 



RUFUS CHOATE 395 

am aware, Rufus, that you have too much independence 
to be greatly influenced in your future course by the 
advice of any one." 

But whilst Choate would certainly decide for himself a 
question on which his future life hinged, he was ever 
grateful for the disinterested counsel of his wise and kind 
friend. 

In the autumn of 1820 he was entered at the Dane 
Law School in Cambridge, under the instruction of Chief 
Justice Parker and Professor Asahel Stearns. 

He was, beyond question, an earnest student of the 
law, but neither then nor ever did he neglect general 
reading. At that time Edward Everett was connected 
with the academic department of the University ; and 
after Mr. Choate's death he said : " While he was at the 
Law School in Cambridge, I was accustomed to meet him, 
more frequently than any other person of his standing, in 
the alcoves of the Library of the University." 

In the following year, 1821, Choate entered the office, 
at Washington, of William Wirt, then Attorney-General 
of the United States, of whom, however, he did not see 
very much, as Mr. Wirt was at that time in ill-health. Mr. 
Wirt, however, wrote of him, November 12, 1822: "Mr. 
Rufus Choate read law in my office and under my direc- 
tion for about twelve months. He evinced great pozver of 
application, and displayed a force and discrimination of mind 
from which I formed the most favorable presages of his future 
distinction in his profession^ The italics are Mr. Wirt's. 

At Washington he heard William Pinkney, both in the 
Senate and in his last argument in Court, and, it is said, 
made him his model. He saw John Marshall preside in the 
Supreme Court, which, as then constituted, he described 
in 1853 as "A tribunal unsurpassed on earth in all that 
gives illustration to a bench of law, not one of whom any 
longer survives." He became familiar with the public 
administration of affairs. To James Marsh he wrote : " I 



396 RUFUS CHOATE 

am sadly at a loss for books here, but I sit three days 
every week in the large Congressional Library, and am 
studying our own extensive ante-Revolutionary history, 
and reading your favorite Gibbon. The only classic I can 
get is Ovid ; and while I am about it, let me say, too, that 
I read every day some chapters in an English Bible. I 
miss extremely the rich opportunities we enjoyed formerly, 
and which you still enjoy, but I hope I shall at last begin 
to think." 

The sudden death of his favorite brother "Washington, 
of whom we have spoken, brought him back, inconsolable, 
to Essex. After a time he entered his name in the law- 
office of Mr. Asa Andrews of Ipswich, and subsequently 
he finished his studies with Judge Cummins of Salem. 
Admitted an attorney of the Court of Common Pleas in 
September, 1822, he was not enrolled as an attorney of 
the Supreme Court until two years later, according to the 
practice of that day. 

His biographer tells us that his sign was first put up 
in Salem ; but the very next day he took it to more 
" removed ground " at South Danvers, where he began 
the practice of the law in earnest. 

Thus launched upon a professional career at the age of 
twenty-four, Mr. Choate's success in obtaining employ- 
ment, though as great as could have been reasonably ex- 
pected, was not at first remarkable. As a student, he had 
been so admired and caressed, that probably his friends 
may have flattered him with the prospect of being at 
once overwhelmed by business. In a letter to his friend 
Marsh, November, 1823, he refers to a " sense of miser- 
ableness," that "presses upon me every moment that I 
am not hard at study." Indeed we are told by his bio- 
grapher, that during the first two or three years of his 
residence at Danvers he was sometimes despondent, and 
even debated whether he ought not to throw up law and 
seek other means of support. This was a mood easily 



RUFUS CIIO ATE 397 

understood by such as have passed through a similar 
experience. Separated from the companionship of the 
friends by whom he had been loved and cheered, he very 
probably fancied that the talents of which he was con- 
scious were unappreciated by the strangers among whom 
he had come to live. This was a natural reaction of feel- 
ing ; but, with his healthful temperament, it could not last 
long, and there is no trace of its recurrence at any sub- 
sequent period. Indeed, with this exception, the tone 
of Mr. Choate's life is manly and bracing. Hard work, 
the excitement of causes, and domestic happiness soon 
wrought a permanent cure ; for in 1825, he married 
Helen, daughter of Mills Olcott, Esq., a lawyer of Han- 
over, New Hamphire, whose acquaintance he of course 
had made whilst connected with Dartmouth College. Mr. 
Olcott was widely known, and highly respected in the 
valley of the upper Connecticut. Mrs. Choate survived 
her husband more than five years, dying December 8, 
1864. She was a woman of gentle, refined, and pure 
character, whose serenity and steadfastness were ever a 
support and consolation to him. 

After all, the Dan vers folk were not slow in finding 
out what sort of man their young attorney was. They 
sent him to the House of Representatives in 1825, and 
again in 1826 ; and his service there opened the way to 
the State Senate in 1827. We are told that " he took 
a prominent part in the debates, and the energy and 
sagacity which he displayed gave him a wide reputation." 
In his lecture upon " The Power of a State developed by 
Mental Culture," delivered before the Mercantile Library 
Association, November 18, 1844, he says: "I may be 
permitted to remember that the first time I ever ven- 
tured to open my lips in a deliberative body, I had the 
honor to support a bill in the House of Representatives, 
in Massachusetts, providing for educating teachers of 
common schools. I should be perfectly willing to open 



398 RUFUS CHOATE 

them for the last time in the same place, in support of 
the same proposition exactly." 

He was an active member of a literary society which 
he found established in Danvers. He joined the Danvers 
Light Infantry, and delivered a Fourth-of-July oration 
before that corps, and another before the citizens at large. 
In short, he received all the honors and discharged all 
the functions belonging to a popular and talented young 
lawyer in that day. We are informed that he always 
had a peculiar regard for Danvers as the place of his 
early struggles and success. And so he expresses him- 
self in the exordium of one of his most beautiful addresses, 
delivered in South Danvers, at the dedication of the Pea- 
body Institute, September 29, 1854 : "I esteem it a great 
privilege to have been allowed to unite with my former 
townsmen, and the friends of so many years, — by whose 
seasonable kindness the earliest struggles of my profes- 
sional life were observed and helped, — the friends of all 
its periods, — so I have found them." 

The lecture on the Waverley Novels was written, we 
are told, during the Danvers residence. 

But in a short time Choate was deeply absorbed in 
forensic contests. Only a small pecuniary value was 
involved in most of them ; but he soon became admired 
as the man who did his best in every cause. He threw 
himself with as much enthusiasm into a trial before a 
country justice in a shoemaker's shop as if it were before 
the Supreme Court. He magnified every litigation, and 
each litigant, magistrate, and juryman. He never hesi- 
tated to pour out all his wealth of imagery, the profusion 
of his classical allusions, and all the exuberance of his 
rhetoric upon trivial occasions and before an illiterate 
audience. And he found his account in it. There was a 
subtle flattery in this treatment which stole the hearts of 
his hearers. But he was also fortunate enough to appear 
before Lemuel Shaw, afterwards the great Chief-Justice 



RUFUS CHOATE 399 

of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, and Samuel Hoar 
of Concord, in an arbitration, as early as June, 1826. 
Judge Shaw wrote of that appearance : " We were much 
and very agreeably surprised at the display of his powers. 
It appeared to me that he then manifested much of that 
keen legal discrimination, of the acuteness, skill, and 
comprehensive view of the requirements of his case, in 
the examination of witnesses, and that clearness and force 
in presenting questions both of fact and of law, by which 
he was so much distinguished in his subsequent brilliant 
professional career. He soon after this removed to Salem, 
and in a short time became extensively and favorably 
known as a jurist and advocate." 

There could be little question of mistaken vocation as 
to a young lawyer who made so vivid an impression upon 
those experienced and hard-headed seniors, Shaw and 
Hoar. 

The most eloquent advocate in Massachusetts before 
the Revolution, James Otis, gathered his first laurels in 
defence of some young men of good family in Plymouth, 
complained of for disorderly conduct. Similarly, the first 
case in which Rufus Choate professionally appeared in 
Salem, was in defence of a number of young men of 
respectable families, charged with riotous proceedings at a 
low dance-house. Asahel Huntington, long an eminent 
member of the Essex Bar, penned in after years a very 
interesting; sketch of this case, which " excited much 
interest from the character and position of some of the 
parties implicated, and especially from the fame, even 
then, of the young advocate. He had before that time, I 
believe, appeared before some of the magistrates of Dan- 
vers." This was known as the Mumford Case. Of 
Choate's argument, Mr. Huntington says: — 

It was a new revelation to this audience. They had heard 
able and eloquent men before in courts of justice and elsewhere. 
Essex had had for years and generations an able, learned, and 



400 KUFUS CHOATE 

eloquent bar ; there had been many giants among us, some of 
national fame and standing, but no such giant as this had ap- 
peared before, — such words, such epithets, such involutions, 
such close and powerful logic all the while, such grace and 
dignity, such profusion, and waste even, of everything beautiful 
and lovely. No, not waste, he never wasted a word. . . . The 
feeling excited by this first speech of Mr. Choate in Salem was 
one of great admiration and delight. All felt lifted up by his 
themes. . . . And all were prepared to welcome him when, a 
few years afterwards, he took up his abode here, after the ele- 
vation of his old friend and teacher, Judge Cummins, to the 
bench of the Court of Common Pleas. 

This seems extravagant language as applied to the 
almost maiden plea of a young man of twenty- five ; but 
it was deliberately written, long subsequently, by a man 
of sense and observation. Certain it is that, as the years 
went on, the appearance of Choate in any cause, under 
any circumstances, was the signal for thronged court- 
rooms by audiences lifted high and still higher upon the 
lofty and ever renewed flights of his winged eloquence. 

To Salem, then, Choate removed in 1828, — at that 
time, as it always has been, the principal seat of the 
courts of Essex County. 

The bar of that county has been illustrated by famous 
men, and was still a very strong and able one when 
Choate was put upon his mettle there. He early acquired 
a great prominence in criminal causes, and it is said that 
no man whom he defended was ever convicted whilst he 
lived in Salem. He got plenty of applause, but, prob- 
ably, very little money in proportion to his labor. One 
of the most famous of his petty causes was that of Jef- 
ferds, indicted for stealing a flock of turkeys, and defended 
by Choate. He was tried three, if not four times, with 
the same result, — a disagreement of the jury; until, in 
despair, the Commonwealth's attorney entered a nol. pros. 
The case had become a cause celebre, the frequenters of 
the courts asking : " When is the turkey case coming on 



RUFUS CHOATE 401 

again ? " It is said that Jeffords afterwards called to pay 
his respects to his counsel in Boston, and was much sur- 
prised at not being recognized, exclaiming : " Why, Mr. 
Choate, I 'm the man you plead so for in the turkey case, 
when they could n't find anything agin me." 

Mr. Huntington's comment is : " There had been only 
forty-four good and true men against him — if there were 
four trials, and I believe there were — without including 
twenty-three more of the grand jury." Possibly Jeffercls 
thought it unkind that he should not be recognized by 
his attorney, to whom his cause had furnished such bril- 
liant opportunities for display. But Mr. Choate's bio- 
grapher tells us he was generally averse to personal 
contact with his clients in criminal cases. He never 
exchanged a word with Tirrell till the clay of the trial, 
when, after the prisoner had been placed in the dock, he 
walked to the rail and said : " Well, sir, are you ready to 
make a strong push for life with me to-day ? ' : The 
answer, of course, was in the affirmative. " Very well, we 
will make it," rejoined Mr. Choate, and returned to his 
seat, not speaking to Tirrell again. After the second suc- 
cessful defence of Tirrell, some legal wit said, " Tirrell 
exists only by the sufferance of Choate." But Tirrell, it 
is recorded, had the impudence to write to Mr. Choate, 
asking a return of one-half the small fee paid, upon the 
ground that it had been so easy to persuade two juries of 
his innocence. 

Doubtless one reason why Choate was reluctant to 
accord interviews to his clients in criminal causes, was 
his inflexible rule never to ask the accused if he did the 
act charged ; but, in one instance, after looking at the 
defendant, he said : " He did it, — he sweats so" 

During many years of his professional career, and till 
he thought he had fully earned his discharge from that 
branch of practice, Mr. Choate did not consider himself at 
liberty to decline retainers in criminal causes. When 

26 



402 RUFUS CHOATE 

retained he believed himself bound, in honor and con- 
science, to present all the law and all the evidence, with 
his entire ability, to the court and the jury ; but he did 
not consider himself bound to receive and conduct such a 
cause upon a theory which did not commend itself to his 
sense of propriety, or his view of the evidence, or the 
fitness of things. 

It must not be supposed that Mr. Choate did not, at all 
times, try many civil actions ; but his glowing eloquence 
and extraordinary resources were naturally more con- 
spicuous in criminal cases, in the days of his youth and 
strength, and before such trials had become irksome to 
him, as they afterwards were. There was, no doubt, a 
keen intellectual enjoyment of the capacity to overcome 
great obstacles. It must also be remembered, that the 
line between civil and criminal practice was not so sharply 
drawn fifty or sixty years ago as it is now. There was 
not the same subdivision of legal business as at present, 
nor was a purely criminal lawyer looked upon with as 
much disfavor as at present. 

Of Mr. Choate it is no exaggeration to say, that his 
talents, dignity, and devotion ennobled every cause in 
which he was engaged. 

It may also be truthfully said in this connection, that, 
however unpopular any cause in which he was ever em- 
ployed, nobody ever thought of impeaching his integrity 
and honor, professional or personal. In 1830 he was 
associated Avith Mr. Webster in the prosecution of Crown- 
inshield and the Knapps for the murder of Captain Joseph 
White of Salem. Probably he may have been employed 
at the suggestion of Webster himself, who was the master- 
spirit of that famous trial. Mr. Choate in the Dart- 
mouth Eulogy, speaking of Webster's great professional 
displays, remarks : " One such I stood in a relation to 
witness with a comparatively easy curiosity, and yet with 
intimate and professional knowledge of all the embarrass- 



RUFUS CHOATE 403 

ments of the case." Choate's name is not of record in the 
cause, but he assisted in preparing the case for the gov- 
ernment, and was constantly in consultation with Webster 
and his associates. 

November 4, 1829, he writes to his old friend Marsh, in 
excusing himself for declining to review that gentleman's 
edition of Coleridge's " Aids to Reflection," "My habits 
have become almost exclusively professional." 

But the time was at hand when he was to be called 
away from professional pursuits. In October, 1830, he 
was nominated by the National Republicans of Essex 
South, as Representative to Congress. It is stated, and 
is believed to be true, that Choate never sought this, or 
any other office or position held by him, and that this 
nomination was made without his knowledge, and accepted 
by him only after some persuasion. The nomination was 
not satisfactory to many. Benjamin W. Crowninshield — 
formerly Secretary of the Navy in the administrations of 
Madison and Monroe, a gentleman of wealth, respectabil- 
ity, and influence — had represented the district for eight 
years, and was not yet ready to retire. There were prob- 
ably others who had looked for the succession, in due 
order of promotion. Choate was objected to as a young 
man, a new comer, ambitious and without experience. 
One young lawyer is remembered to have declaimed 
vigorously against him, — and with some reason, — that, 
instead of being a substantial citizen like Mr. Crownin- 
shield, he was only stopping in Salem, " while he oated 
his horse," on the way from Danvers to Boston. Mr. 
Crowninshield was supported as an independent candi- 
date ; but Choate was elected by a majority of more than 
five hundred votes over all opposing candidates. His own 
motives and feelings are expressed, doubtless with sincer- 
ity, in his letter to Marsh, dated November 14, 1830. 

The matter of my election I do suppose rather a foolish one 
on my part ; but the nomination was so made that I could not 



404 EUFUS CHOATE 

avoid it without wilfully shutting myself out of Congress for 
life, — since my declining would undoubtedly have brought for- 
ward some other new candidate, who, if elected, would go ten 
years at least; long before which time, if living, I might have 
removed from the District. . . . 

The responsibilities of the new place I appreciate fully ; pro 
parte virili, I shall try to meet them. I have a whole year yet, 
you know, before me, before I take my seat ; quite short time 
enough for me to mature and enter on a course of study and 
thought adapted to this sphere of duty. I hardly dare yet look 
the matter in the face. Political life — between us — is no part 
of my plan, although I trust I shall aim in good faith to perform 
the duties thus temporarily and incidentally assigned. 

There is no reason to think that Mr. Choate ever 
swerved from the views thus expressed as to a political 
career. He prized the honor of this election, as after- 
wards that to the Senate ; but he looked upon either 
service as temporary; and, having rendered it to the best 
of his ability, he returned with satisfaction to private 
life. 

During his residence in Salem, Choate had continued 
his early habit of diligent study. Standing at a high 
desk, pen in hand, and a manuscript book before him, he 
read law and made notes assiduously. At this period he 
carefully studied equity as administered in Massachusetts, 
and collated the decisions. He still kept up his literary 
tastes, but specially devoted himself to mental and polit- 
ical philosophy, and at one time to theology. After the 
election, he began to prepare himself for his new duties; 
not procrastinating, as the date of the following memo- 
randum shows. It is the first page of a new common- 
place book, then commenced. 

November 4, 1830. 
Facienda ad munus nuper impositum. 

1. Pers. quals. [personal qualities]. Memory — Daily Food 
and Cowper, dum ambulo. Voice. Manner — exercitationes 
diurnce. 



RUFUS CHOATE 405 

2. Current politics in papers. 1. Cum notulis, daily. — Geog. 
&c. 2. Annual Reg'r. Past Intelligencers, &c. 

3. District S. E. [i. e. Essex South]. Pop. Occs. [population, 
occupations]. Modes of Living. Commerce — the Treaties, 
and Principles on which it depends. 

4. Civil History of U. States, in Pitkin and [original] 
Sources. 

5. Exam, of Pending Questions : Tariff, Pub. Lands, Indians, 
Nullification. 

6. Am. and Brit. Eloquence, — Writing, Practice. 

Then follow [says his biographer] more than twenty pages 
of the closest writing, with abbreviated and condensed state- 
ments of results, drawn from many volumes, newspapers, mes- 
sages and speeches, with propositions and arguments for and 
against, methodically arranged under topics, with minute divi- 
sions and subdivisions. Some of these heads, under which he 
endeavors to compress the most essential political knowledge, 
are these : — 

1. Public Lands, giving the number of acres in the whole 
country, the States where they lie, the sources whence derived, 
the progress and system of sales, &c, &c. 

2. Politics of 1831, brought down to the beginning of the 
session in December ; an analysis of the President's Message, 
and notes upon the subjects which it suggests; the measures 
and policy of the government. 

3. The Tariff, beginning with an analysis of Hamilton's Re- 
port in 1790 ; History of Legislation respecting it ; Internal 
Improvements, their cost, and the Constitutional power of mak- 
ing them. 

Then follow three or four closely written pages on particular 
articles, — wool, cotton, flax, hemp, iron, — as affected by the 
tariff. 

4. Analysis of British opinions. 

5. Cause of the excitement in the Southern States. 

6. Commerce of the United States in 1831. 

These are but samples of the subjects which occupied his 
attention, but they may serve to indicate the thoroughness with 
which he prepared for his new position. 

Regarding this systematic and patient course of study, 



406 RUFUS CHOATE 

— knowing already his remarkable power of acquisition 
and strength of memory, to which we may add an equally 
wonderful ability to assimilate, — we are not surprised to 
be told that when he took his seat in Congress in Decem- 
ber, 1831, he speedily attained high rank. He was not 
forward or assuming, and did not speak very frequently, 
but watched the course of public business with close at- 
tention, studied new questions carefully, and was often 
in the library of Congress. He was not then, nor ever, 
tolerant of the business of committees ; his mind moved 
too quickly for the processes of ordinary men, and he 
endured with impatience the waste of time so precious 
to him. There were some great and many able men on 
the floor of Congress. In the Senate were Webster, 
Prentiss of Vermont, Peleg Sprague of Maine, Marcy, 
Dallas, Clayton, Clay, and Benton ; whilst in the House 
there were John Quincy Adams, Nathan Appleton, George 
N. Briggs, Everett, and John Davis of Massachusetts, 
Evans of Maine, Verplanck of New York, Tom Corwin, 
Wayne of Georgia, McDuffie of South Carolina, James K. 
Polk of Tennessee. 

Mr. Choate made a speech in his first session upon the 
Revolutionary Pension Bill, which was both instructive 
and persuasive. His speech upon the Tariff, of which he 
had made so careful a study, is said to have made a pro- 
found impression upon the House in its delivery, — much 
heightened in effect by the passage of a severe thunder- 
storm, to whose influences Choate was always exqui- 
sitely sensitive. This effort established his fame as a 
parliamentary orator. It may be observed, in passing, 
that his famous Eulogy on Webster, at Dartmouth, was 
pronounced under similar circumstances, producing similar 
impressions upon his auditors. 

In April, 1833, Choate was re-elected by an increased 
majority. March 28, 1834, he spoke upon the removal 
of the deposits by President Jackson, an effort of which 



RUFUS CHOATE 407 

" old Ben Hardin " of Kentucky said : " I became charmed 
by the music of his voice, and was captivated by the 
power of his eloquence, and found myself wholly unable 
to move until the last word of his beautiful speech had 
been uttered." 

At the close of this session Mr. Choate resigned his 
seat in Congress, and removed to Boston, where he de- 
voted himself with renewed zeal to the practice of law. 
August 16, 1834. he delivered, at the bicentennial of the 
settlement of his native town of Ipswich, the admirable 
address which, in his published works, is called " The 
Colonial Age of New England." To this period is ascribed 
also a lecture upon Poland ; and, soon after his removal 
to Boston, the famous " Romance of the Sea," of the loss 
of which, soon afterwards, mention has been made. 

From 1834 to 1841 Choate remained in private life, 
trying law-cases, winning and maintaining a high place 
at the Suffolk Bar, studying law, and finding his delight, 
according to his wont, in literature. When, in 1841, Mr. 
Webster entered the Cabinet of President Harrison, Mr. 
Choate was chosen by the Massachusetts Legislature to 
succeed him in the Senate of the United States. It is 
explicitly declared that he at first positively refused the 
offer of an election, and only yielded upon great urgency, 
and the understanding that he should be permitted, after 
two or three years, to resign. 

The reasons of his reluctance are probably not far to 
seek. He enjoyed the contests and triumphs of the bar, 
he was poor, and desired to secure a competence for his 
family ; he delighted in his home and was loath to leave 
it; he was probably conscious of a mental and moral 
delicacy which made the conflicts of politics distasteful to 
him, and he despised political intrigue and office-seeking. 
The sudden death of President Harrison caused Mr. 
Choate to be summoned to deliver a eulogy upon him in 
Faneuil Hall, which is well remembered as a pathetic and 
eloquent production. 



408 RUFUS CHOATE 

Taking his seat in the Senate at its extra session, Mr. 
Choate bore a prominent part in the memorable debates 
that followed. He first spoke, with great applause, upon 
the questions growing out of the case of Alexander Mc- 
Leocl, indicted in the State of New York for the burning 
of the steamer Caroline. 

Upon the bill for the re-establisment of a National 
Bank, Mr. Rives of Virginia moved an amendment, mak- 
ing the assent of States necessary for the creation of 
branches within their limits. Mr. Choate briefly supported 
this amendment, not as doubting the Constitutional power 
of Congress to dispense with such assent, but from con- 
siderations of policy. He expressed his doubt whether, 
without such a provision, the bill could be carried through 
Congress, and declared his belief that if it should be, it 
would fail to become a law. He did not enter upon the 
grounds of his belief, saying : u The rules of orderly pro- 
ceeding here, decorum, pride, regret, would all prevent 
my doing it. I have no personal or private grounds for 
the conviction which holds me fast ; but I judge on noto- 
rious and, to my mind, decisive indications." This lan- 
guage very clearly indicated Mr. Choate's belief that the 
bill would be vetoed by President Tyler if it passed Con- 
gress. But it does not seem to warrant the conclusion 
that he had any actual or peculiar knowledge upon the 
subject. He was, however, the intimate friend and pro- 
tege of Mr. Webster, President Tyler's Secretary of 
State. Henry Clay, then unmistakably the autocratic 
head of the Whig party, and ready to declare war upon 
the administration, roughly and ungenerously interro- 
gated Mr. Choate as to the grounds of his belief. Choate 
was unquestionably taken by surprise by the violent and 
arrogant manner of this attack. He was himself a young 
member, not perfectly familiar with the Senate and 
its usages, whilst he had been accustomed to regard Mr. 
Clay with the deference to which his age, experience, 



RUFUS CHOATE 409 

and pre-eminent abilities entitled him. It is the tradition 
that Choate did not reply with all the spirit and vigor the 
occasion called for. Mr. Choate's careful and judicious 
biographer was " informed by those who were present, 
that the impression in the Senate Chamber was much less 
than it was represented by the newspapers." But Mr. 
Winthrop, in his fine Memorial of Henry Clay, says : 
" Like Palmerston, he could sometimes be ' lofty and 
sour,' and sometimes even rude towards those who op- 
posed him. He was so to Kufus Choate, in my own hear- 
ing, in the Senate Chamber." But Mr. Clay could also 
be magnanimous ; and the very next day he tendered 
open and ample apology upon the floor of the Senate, 
which was accepted by Mr. Choate with frank grace. 
Such a collision was doubtless very distasteful to the 
gentle nature of Choate ; but if he did not rise quite 
promptly to the shock of Henry Clay's overbearing onset, 
it is not to be inferred that he was crushed by it, or that 
he did not gain later laurels upon the same field. Horace 
Greeley tells us that he saw Stephen A. Douglas, when a 
new member of the Senate, " quail " before the glance 
of Daniel Webster ; but the friends of Douglas glory 
that, on another day, he struck his lance full upon the 
shield of the Great Expounder. 

Choate made a lofty speech in favor of the confirmation 
of Edward Everett as minister to England, opposed on 
the ground of his alleged Abolitionism. In the next 
session he spoke ably on a number of measures, espe- 
cially on the Bankrupt Bill, the Tariff, and the bill to 
provide further remedial justice in the courts of the 
United States, which grew out of the difficulties of the 
case of McLeod. In J 84 3 he vigorously supported Mr. 
Webster's Ashburton Treaty, making three speeches on 
that and kindred topics. 

In the session of 1844 he debated, with great power 
and eloquence, the Oregon Question ; and his noble strain 



410 BUFUS CHOATE 

in reply to Mr. Buchanan's declaration that America 
entertained a deep-seated enmity to England, is one of 
the finest passages of Congressional oratory. The late 
Alexander H. Stephens quoted it from memory thirty- 
four years after, in a very graphic sketch of the de- 
livery of the speech; "at the conclusion of which," he 
says, " I was confirmed in the opinion that he was the 
greatest orator I ever heard, — in this respect, greater 
than Calhoun, Clay, or Webster ! " 

Mr. Choate's speech upon the bill proposed by Mr. 
McDufhe of South Carolina, to revive the Tariff of 1833, 
contains some brilliant passages, especially the highly 
characteristic description of the eccentricities of the cli- 
mate of New England. And his reply to Mr. McDuffie's 
personal assault upon himself is a masterpiece of effective 
and even scornful satire ; and must be considered conclu- 
sively to establish that, even if he once faltered for an 
instant when the masterful Kentuckian bore down upon 
him, he would yield to no less a champion. Upon the 
whole it may be safely recorded, that if Mr. Choate had 
chosen to remain in the Senate, his high aims, patient 
investigation, lofty — even chivalrous — sense of honor, 
charming grace of manner, wondrous oratory, and no less 
wonderful adaptability, would have made him the cher- 
ished favorite and ornament of the Chamber. Multitudes 
would have flocked to hear his speeches, and we should 
now read such encomiums upon them as were poured 
forth in the enraptured Commons at the close of Sheridan's 
dazzling speech on the impeachment of Warren Hastings. 
But a political leader, Mr. Choate could never have been. 
He was not a coward or sluggard ; he was, on the other 
hand, a bold champion. He would- ride forth on caracol- 
ing steed, with fluttering pennon, and gallant mien and 
high heart, and lance gaily set at rest, against any chal- 
lenger. But neither by temperament, nor by ambition 
or patience, was he adapted to the long, severe, uninter- 



EUFUS CHOATE 411 

mitting contests of protracted sessions. His profession, 
his library, his wife and children, beckoned him away, and 
his and their necessities constrained him, when he resigned 
his seat in the Senate in 1845. 

In his last session he argued with great power against 
the annexation of Texas. He supported George Evans's 
amendment, that Florida should not be admitted to the 
Union until the articles should be struck from her con- 
stitution, forbidding the legislature to emancipate slaves, 
or to permit the immigration of free persons of color. He 
took great interest in the organization of the Smithso- 
nian Institution, and was the author and principal advo- 
cate of the library plan which was adopted by Congress. 
Elected a member of the Board of Regents, he continued 
to take great interest in the affairs of the Institute until, 
in 1854, a departure was made from that plan by the 
Board. Opposing it with even more than his wonted 
eloquence, but defeated, he resigned the trust immediately 
after. 

Choate's reputation as an orator was much enhanced 
by his address, " The age of the Pilgrims, the Heroic 
Period of our History," made in New York before the 
New England Association, December 22, 1843. This 
address is rich with high thought, with poetry, with 
beauty, tenderness, and pathos. Its effect in delivery was 
magnetic. The vividness of the following description of 
the scene will justify its transcription here : — 

The oration was delivered in the old Broadway Tabernacle, 
then the largest auditorium in the city. The great building was 
crowded to hear the famous speaker. Mr. "Webster and other 
distinguished men were on the platform. Mr. Choate was then 
in his prime, and his presence was hardly less striking than that 
of the Great Expounder. [He was] tall [and] thin, his complex- 
ion a rich olive, his eye large, liquid, glowing; the face Oriental, 
rather than American, and generally rather sad than eager and 
passionate. His voice was a rich baritone, sonorous, majestic, 



412 RUFUS CHOATE 

finely modulated, and inimitable in the expression of pathos. 
He philosophically developed the rise of Puritanism, and the 
cause of the Pilgrim emigration, and came down to the May- 
flower, to Miles and Rose Standish, to the landing at Plymouth, 
the severity of the winter, the famine and the sickness, and the 
many deaths, — fifty out of a hundred, including the beautiful 
Rose Standish. Pausing, with a sad, far-off look in his eyes, as 
if the vision had suddenly risen upon his memory, and with a 
voice inexpressibly sweet and pathetic, and nearly choked with 
emotion, he said : " In a late visit to Plymouth I sought the 
spot where these earlier dead were buried. It was on a bank 
somewhat elevated, near, fronting, and looking upon the waves 
— symbol of what life had been to them ; ascending inland be- 
hind and above the rock — symbol also of that Rock of Ages 
on which the dying had rested in that final hour." 

I have never seen an audience so moved. The orator had 
skilfully led up to this passage, and then, with a voice sur- 
charged with emotion, symbolized the stormy and tumultuous 
life, the sudden and sad end, and the heroic faith with which, 
resting upon the Rock of Ages, they had lain down on the shore 
of the Eternal Sea. As Choate approached the climax, Web- 
ster's emotion became uncontrollable ; the great eyes were filled 
with tears, the great frame shook ; he bowed his head to con- 
ceal his face in his hat, and I almost seemed to hear his sob. 
The audience was flooded with tears, a handkerchief at every 
face ; and sighs and sobs soughed through the house, like wind 
in the tree-tops. The genius of the orator had transferred us 
to the spot ; and we saw the rocky shore, and with him mourned 
the early dead. We have had one Rufus Choate ; alas ! we 
shall never have another. 

It is probably within bounds to say that, after this 
masterly effort, Mr. Choate's reputation was established 
in all quarters, as one of the first, if not the very first of 
eloquent orators and persuasive advocates. There was 
more question about the solidity of his understanding and 
the strength of his reasoning. There are expressions of 
Mr. Choate extant, which show that he understood very 
well the estimation in which he was held, and that he 



KUFUS CHOATE 413 

resolutely determined to spare no effort to conquer the 
world's esteem and his own. 

He had always been a close student and a ravenous 
reader. Of course, the range of his studies had in early 
life been ordered by the necessities of his scholastic and 
professional preparation; afterwards, very much by the 
exigencies of his legislative service in the State and in 
Congress, and by his legal engagements. Outside of the 
labors thus imposed upon him, he had at times studied 
law very diligently, and had taken all literature for his 
province. Probably, however, his reading, though exten- 
sive, had been rather desultory. About this time he 
seems to have distributed his scant leisure more rigor- 
ously. And, as the most valuable lesson of Mr. Choate's 
life for young men, especially those in the professions, is 
the necessity and profit of economizing spare portions of 
time for self-culture, it may be useful to set forth his 
methods in detail. This, fortunately, may be done in his 
own language, for he began in May, 1843, what he styles 
an " imperfect journal of readings and actions," in which 
he writes : — 

I can see very clearly that an hour a day might, with mani- 
fold and rich usefulness, be employed upon a journal. Such a 
journal, written with attention to language and style, would be 
a very tolerable substitute for the most stimulating and most 
improving of the disciplinary and educational exercises — careful 
composition. It should not merely enumerate the books looked 
into, and the professional and other labors performed, but it 
should embrace a digest, or at least an index, of subjects of what 
I read ; some thoughts suggested by my reading ; something to 
evince that an acquisition has been made, a hint communicated, 
— a step taken in the cultivation of the immortal, intellectual, and 
moral nature ; a translation, perhaps, or other effort of laborious 
writing ; a faithful and severe judgment on the intellectual and 
the moral quality of all I shall have done, — the failure, the 
success, and the lessons of both. Thus conducted, it would 
surely be greatly useful. Can I keep such an one ? Prorsus 
ignoro — prorsus dubito. Spero tamen. . . . 



414 RUFUS CHOATE 

I have a little course, for instance, of authors, whom I read for 
English words and thoughts, and to keep up my Greek, Latin, 
and French. Let me, after finishing my day's little work of 
each, record here what I have read, with some observation or 
some lesson. I am sure the time I now give to one would be 
better spent if equally divided between him and this journal. 
I am not to forget that I am, and must be if I would live, a 
student of professional forensic rhetoric. I grow old. My fate 
requires, appoints, that I do so StSacr/co/zeVo?, — arte rhetoricd. 
A wide and anxious survey of that art and that science teaches 
me that careful, constant writing is the parent of ripe speech. 
It has no other. But that writing must be all rhetorical writ- 
ing, — that is, such as might in some parts of some speech be 
uttered to a listening audience. It is to be composed as in and 
for the presence of an audience. So it is to be intelligible, per- 
spicuous, pointed, terse, with image, epithet, turn, advancing and 
impulsive, full of generalizations, maxims, illustrating the say- 
ings of the wise. . . . 

Those I love best may read, smile, or weep, when I am dead, 
at such a record of lofty design and meagre achievement ! yet 
they will recognize a spirit that endeavored well. 

In this critical spirit he reads the Gospels in Greek, 
and compares with that the French and German text; 
then reads commentators, and records his impressions of 
all. In the same way he reviews Quintilian, de copia ver- 
borum, and writes : — 

How such a language — such an English — is to be attained, 
is plain. It is by reading and hearing, — reading the best books, 
hearing the most accomplished speakers. Some useful hints 
how to read and how to hear I gather from this excellent 
teacher, and verify by my own experience and accommodate 
to my own taste. 

I have been long in the practice of reading daily some first- 
class English writer, chiefly for the copia verborum, to avoid 
sinking into cheap and bald fluency, to give elevation, energy, 
sonorousness, and refinement to my vocabular}'. Yet with this 
object I would unite other and higher objects, — the acquisition 
of things, of taste, criticism, facts of biography, images, senti- 
ments. Johnson's Poets happens just now to be my book. 



RUFUS CHOATE 415 

May 15, 1843, he writes of a trial in which he had been 
engaged : — 

I am not conscious of having pressed any consideration farther 
than I ought to have done, although the entire effort may have 
seemed an intense and overwrought one. . . . 

I could and should have prepared my argument beforehand, 
and with more allusion, illustration, and finish. Topics, prin- 
ciples of evidence, standards of probability, quotations, might 
have been much more copiously accumulated and distributed. 
There should have been less said, — a better peroration, more 
dignity, and general better phraseology. 

I remark a disinclination to cross-examine, which I must at 
once check. . . . 

Whole days of opportunity of preparation stupidly lost. . . . 
I have read nothing since Sunday until to-day ; and to-day only 
a page of Greenleaf on Evidence, and a half-dozen lines of 
Greek, Latin, and French. But I prepared the case of the 
Ipswich Man. Co. My Greek was the Fifth Book of the 
Odyssey. 

Again he writes : — 

The week which closes to-day has not been one of great 
labor or much improvement. I discussed the case of Allen and 
the Corporation of Essex, under the pressure of ill-health ; and 
I have read and digested a half-dozen pages of Greenleaf on 
Evidence, and as many more of Story on the Dissolution of 
Partnership. Other studies of easier pursuit, nor wholly use- 
less, — if studies I may denominate them, — I have remembered 
in those spaces of time which one can always command, though 
few employ. 

He then digests what he has read of Tacitus in Latin, 
and of the Odyssey in Greek ; also, what he has read in 
French. " For English, I have read Johnson's Lives to 
the beginning of Dryden ; Alison, a little ; Antony and 
Cleopatra, a little ; Quintilian's chapters on Writing and 
on Extempore Speech I have read and re-read, but mean 
to-morrow to abridge and judge," which, on the morrow, 
he elaborately does, and a translation from the same au- 
thor follows. 



416 EUFUS CHOATE 

June 6, he writes : — 

I have carefully read a page or two of Johnson's Dryden, and 
a scene or two of Antony and Cleopatra every morning, — mark- 
ing any felicity or peculiarity of phrase ; have launched Ulys- 
ses from the isle of Calypso, and brought him in sio-ht of 
Phseacia. Kept along in Tacitus, and am reading a pretty 
paper in the Memoirs on the Old Men of Homer. I read Homer 
more easily and with appreciation, though with no helps but 
Cowper and Donegan's Lexicon. Fox and Canning's speeches 
are a more professional study, not useless, not negligently pur- 
sued. Alas, alas ! there is no time to realize the dilating and 
burning idea of excellence and eloquence inspired by the great 
gallery of the immortals in which I walk ! 

June 24th. — I respire more freely in this pure air of a day of 
rest. Let me record a most happy method of legal study, by 
which I believe and feel that I am reviving my love of the law ; 
enlarging my knowledge of it ; and fitting myself, according to 
the precepts of the masters, for its forensic discussions. I can 
find, and have generally been able to find, an hour or two for 
legal reading beyond and beside cases already under investiga- 
tion. That time and that reading I have lost, no matter how. 
I have adopted the plan of taking a volume, the last volume of 
Massachusetts Reports, and of making a full brief of an argu- 
ment on every question in every case, examining all the author- 
ities, finding others, and carefully composing an argument as 
well reasoned, as well expressed, as if I were going to-morrow 
to submit it to a bench of the first of jurists. At the comple- 
tion of each argument, I arrange the propositions investigated 
in my legal commonplace book, and index them. Already I 
remark renewed interest in legal investigations ; renewed power 
of recalling, arranging, and adding to old acquisitions ; increased 
activity and attention of mind ; more thought ; more effort ; a 
deeper image on the memory ; growing facility of expression. 
I confess delight, too, in adapting thus the lessons of the great 
teachers of rhetoric to the study of the law and of legal elo- 
quence. I resume Quintilian, p. 399, § 7 : [A translation fol- 
lows.] . . . Thus far, Quintilian. 

I read, beside my lessons, the Temptation, in Matthew, Mark, 
and Luke, in the Greek ; and then that grand and grave poem 
which Milton has built upon those few and awful verses, Para- 



KUFUS CHOATE 417 

dise Regained. I recognize and profoundly venerate the vast 
poetical luminary " in this more pleasing light, shadowy." 

In the following winter we find him writing to his 
daughters from Washington : " I am reading French law- 
books to prepare for a case." 

He was still writing an hour every day in his journal ; 
" it must be an hour of activity and exercise of mind." 
In this fashion he records his impressions of Pope, and 
the youth of Milton : — 

Boston, June 23, 1844. — It is necessary to reconstruct a life 
at home ; life professional and yet preparatory ; educational, in 
reference to other than professional life. In this scheme the 
first resolution must be to do whatever business I can find to do, 
— tot. vir. maximo conatu, — as for my daily bread. To enable 
me to do this, I must revive and advance the faded memory of 
the law ; and I can devise no better method than that of last 
summer, — the preparation of a careful brief, on every case in 
Metcalfs last volume, of an argument in support of the decision. 
In preparing this brief, law, logic, eloquence, must be studied 
and blended together. The airy phrase, the turn of real reply, 
are to be sought and written out. I may embody in a common- 
place the principles acquired ; and I shall particularly strive to 
become as familiar with he last cases of the English and Fed- 
eral Benches at least, — and, if possible, of those of New York, 
Maine, and New Hampshire, — as of our own. I have lost the 
whole course of these adjudications for some years. These 
studies — and this practice — for the law. 

We are told that Mr. Choate kept up this method of 
studying the Massachusetts Decisions, and of making a 
brief upon the topic of each, to the end of his life. 

I advance to plans of different studies, and to the training for 
a different usefulness and a more conspicuous exertion. To 
avoid a hurtful diffusion of myself over too wide and various a 
space, — laboriose nihil agens, — I at once confine my rhetorical 
exercitations within strict and impassable limits. I propose to 
translate Cicero's Catiline orations, — or as many as I can, be- 

27 



418 RUFUS CHOATE 

ginning with the first, — with notes. The object is, — 1st. the 
matter and manner of a great master of speech ; 2d, English de- 
bating style and words ; 3d, the investigation of the truth of a 
considerable portion of history. All the helps are near me. I 
shall turn the orator, as nearly as I can, into a debater states- 
man of this day, in Parliament and in Congress. 

With this I shall read Burke's American speeches, writing 
observations on them. The object is his matter and manner, 
useful gleanings, rules of speech. But to this is to be added 
the study of politics. And for this circumstances are propitious. 
The approaching election requires that the true national policy 
of the country should be impressed on the minds of the people 
of America. To elect a Whig administration is to prefer, and 
to secure, the practical realization of that policy. To induce the 
people to elect such an administration, you must first teach them 
to prefer to desire that policy. To do that, it must be explained, 
contrasted, developed, decorated. To do that, it is to be deeply 
studied. I mean, therefore, to compose discourses on the tariff; 
on Texas ; on currency ; on the general points of difference and 
grounds of choice between the parties, and the like, — embody- 
ing what I understand to be the Whig politics, and the sound 
politics of the hour. In all, through all, an impulsive presen- 
tation of truths — such an one as will move to the giving of 
votes for particular men, representing particular opinions — is 
the aim. Every one ought to be, and to involve : 1st, an honest 
study of the topic, and so an advance in political knowledge ; 
2ndly, a diligent effort to move the public mind to action by its 
treatment, and so an exercise in speech. Princip. fons sapientice. 
Truth for the staple — good taste, the form — persuasion to act, 
for the end. . . . 

j u ly 17. — Engaged in translating " Cicero against Catiline," 

— with the aid of Sallust's History. 

Again he writes : — 

There is a pleasure beyond expression in revising, re-arrang- 
ing, and extending my knowledge of the law. The effort to do 
so is imperatively prescribed by the necessities and proprieties 
of my circumstances ; but it is a delightful effort to record some 
of the uses to which I try to make it subservient, and some of 
the methods on which I conduct it. My first business is obvi- 



RUFUS CHOATE 419 

ously to apprehend the exact point of each new case which I 
study, — to apprehend and enunciate it precisely, neither too 
largely nor too narrowly, — accurately, justly. This necessarily 
and perpetually exercises and trains the mind, and prevents in- 
ertness, dulness of edge. This done, I arrange the new truth, 
or old truth, or whatever it be, in a system of legal arrangement, 
for which purpose I abide by Blackstone, to which I turn daily, 
and which I seek more and more indelibly to impress on my 
memory. Then I advance to the question of the law of the new 
decision: its conformity with standards of legal truth, — with 
the statute it interprets ; the cases on which it reposes ; the 
principles by which it is defended by the court ; the law ; 
the question of whether the case is law or not. This leads to a 
history of the point ; a review of the adjudications ; a compari- 
son of the judgment and argument with the criteria of legal 
truth. More thought, — producing and improved by more writ- 
ing, and more attention to last cases of English and our best 
reports, are wanting still. I seem to myself to think it is within 
my competence to be master of the law, as an administrative 
science. But let me always ask at the end of an investigation, 
can this law be reformed ? How ? why ? why not ? Qui bono 
the attempt ? 

A charm of the study of law is the sensation of advance, of 
certainty, of having apprehended, — or being in progression to- 
wards a complete apprehension of a distinct department and body 
of knowledge. How can this charm be found in other acquisi- 
tions? How can I hit on some other field or department of 
knowledge which I may hope to master ; in which I can feel 
that I am making progress ; the collateral and contemporaneous 
study of which may rest, refresh, and liberalize me, yet not leave 
mere transient impressions, phrases, tincture, — but a body of 
digested truths, and an improved understanding, and a supe- 
riority to others in useful attainment, giving snatches of time, 
minutes and parts of hours, to Cicero, Homer, Burke and Mil- 
ton, to language and literature. I think I see in the politics of 
my own country, in the practical politics of my country, a de- 
partment of thought and study, a field of advancement, which 
may divide my time, and enhance my pleasure and my improve- 
ment, with an efficacy of useful results equal to the law. 

My experience in affairs will give interest to the study of the 
thing. It will assist the study, as well as give it interest. . . . 



420 RUFUS CHOATE 

One hour of exclusive study a day, with these helps, might 
carry one very far, — so far at least, as to confer some of the sen- 
sations, and some of the enjoyments, attending considerable and 
connected acquisitions. Let me think of methods and aims. 

1. The first great title in this science is the Constitution, — its 
meaning, its objects, the powers it gives, the powers it refuses, 
and the grand reasons why. 

2. The second is the policy on which that Constitution ought 
to be administered, the powers it ought to put forth, the inter- 
ests, domestic and foreign, to which it ought to attend. This 
is practical statesmanship, the statesmanship of the day. Now 
let us see how systematic and scientific acquisitions are to be 
achieved on these grand subjects. 

1. It is to be done by composing a series of discourses, in the 
manner of lectures or speeches or arguments or essays, as the 
mood varies, on the particulars into which these titles expand 
themselves, &c. I am to write then, first, the History of the 
Formation and Adoption of the Constitution. . . . 

Truth, truth is the sole end and aim. I shall read first with 
pen in hand, for collecting the matter, and not begin to com- 
pose till the general and main facts are tolerably familiar. 

Mr. Choate took an active part in the Presidential 
canvass of 1844, earnestly advocating the election of Mr. 
Clay, and support of the Whig party, as the above extracts 
have shown his intention to do. 

August 24, he writes in his journal : — 

I have gone through a week of unusual labor, — not wholly 
unsatisfactorily to myself. I deliberately record my determi- 
nation to make no more political speeches, and to take no more 
active part in the election or in practical politics. One ex- 
ception I leave myself to make. But I do not mean to make 
it ; I have earned the discharge, — honesta missio petitur et con- 
cessa erit. To my profession, totis viribus, I am now dedicated, 
— to my profession of the law and of advocacy, with as large 
and fair an accompaniment of manly and graceful studies as I 
can command. . . . 

/September 29th. — A little attention to things and persons 
and reputations about me, teaches that uncommon professional 



KUFUS CHOATE 421 

exertions are necessary to recover business to live, and a trial 
or two teaches me that I can very zealously and very thoroughly 
and con amore, discuss any case. How well I can do so, com- 
pared with others, I shall not express an opinion on paper, — 
but if I live, all blockheads, which are shaken at certain mental 
peculiarities, shall know and feel a reasoner, a lawyer, and a 
man of business. In all this energy and passion I mean to say 
no more than that the utmost possible jyains-taking with every 
case is perfectly indispensable, and fortunately not at all irk- 
some. The case in hand demands, invites, to a most exact, pre- 
pared, and deep legal and rhetorical discourse. . . . 

For the rest, I grow into knowledge of Homer and Tacitus 
and Juvenal, — and of the Rome of the age from Augustus to 
Trajan. . . . 

The classical historians I do love. I read Tacitus daily. But 
this is for their language, for their pictures, for their poetical 
incident, the rhetorical expression, the artistical perfectness 
and beauty. 

The history I would read is modern. I should go no farther 
back than Gibbon ; should recall the general life, thoughts, 
action, of the Middle Age in him, and Hallam's two great works ; 
and begin to study, to write, to deduce, to lay up, in the stand- 
ard, particular histories of the great countries. 

Let me begin, then, with a succinct display of the foreign 
politics of England in the reign of William, [i. e., William III.] 

He writes in this fragmentary journal, under the date 
of Boston, December 9, 1844 : — 

About to set off to Washington, there to close, in two months, 
forever my political life, and to begin my return to my profes- 
sion, I am moved with a passion for planning a little, — what, in 
all probability, will not be performed, — or not performed with- 
out pretty essential variations and interruptions. 

1. Some professional work must be done every day. 

He has cases in the Supreme Court to prepare ; but, in 
addition, he purposes also to read upon Evidence and 
Cowen's Phillipps. 

2. In my Greek, Latin, and French readings, — Odyssey, 
Thucydides, Tacitus, Juvenal, and some orator or critic, — I 



422 RUFUS CHOATE 

need make no change. So, too, Milton, Johnson, Burke, — 
semper in manu — ut mos est. . . . 

3. The business of the session ought to engross, and shall, ray 
chief attention. The Smithsonian Fund ought to be applied 
to a great library ; and a report and speech in favor of such an 
appropriation are the least I owe so grand and judicious a des- 
tination of a noble gift. An edition of the laws, on the plan of 
last winter, is only next in dignity and importance. For the 
res t, — the reduction of postage, the matter of Texas, the tariff, 
will be quite likely, with the Supreme Court, to prevent time 
from hanging vacantly on my hands. Sit mihi diligentia, sint 
vires, — sit denique et prcecipue gratia ! 

And now for details of execution. 

I. Walk an hour before breakfast ; morning paper ; Johnson 
and Milton before breakfast. Add, if possible, with notes, an 
essay of Bacon also, or a paper of the Spectator, or a page of 
some other paper of Addison. 

II. After, — 1. The regular preparation for the Senate, be it 
more or less. Let this displace, indeed, all else, before or after. 
2. If that allows — (a) preparation of cases for courts. (6) if 
that allows — 1. Page in Cowen's Phillipps. 2. Then prepara- 
tion for courts. 3. Then Senate, &c. 

III. Letters and Session. 

IV. Then — subject to claims of debate and of Court — 
Greek, Latin, French, ut supra, Burke, Taylor. 

V. The cases to be prepared by, say 20th January ; debate 
oftener than formerly ; less preparation is really needful, yet 
seek one great occasion. 

December 28, 1844, he writes : — 

My readings have been pretty regular and almost systematic. 
Phillipps's Evidence, with notes, Johnson, the Tatler, the 
Whig Examiner, and Milton, in the morning. Some thoughts 
on the Smithsonian Fund, and one or two other Senatorial mat- 
ters in the forenoon, and the Odyssey, Thucydides in Bloom- 
field, Hobbes and Arnold, .Demosthenes for the Crown, Tacitus, 
Juvenal, and Horace Be Arte Poet., with Dacier and Hurd. For 
the rest, I have read Jeffrey's contributions to the Review, and 
have plunged into a pretty wide and most unsatisfactory course of 
inquiry concerning the Pelasgi, and the origin of Greek culture, 



KUFUS CHOATE 423 

and the Greek mind. Upon this subject, let me set down a few 
thoughts. 

Then follows a long and fine passage upon the history 
of Ancient Greece, and the value of a good work on that 
subject, written by a competent American. 

To me, cogitante scepenumero on what one such labor I may 
concentrate moments and efforts, else sure to be dissipated and 
unproductive, — this seems to be obviously my reserved task. It 
is large enough and various enough to employ all my leisure, 
stimulate all my faculties, cultivate all my powers and tastes ; 
and it is seasonable and applicable in the actual condition of 
these States. . . . Let me slowly, surely begin. I seek political 
lessons for my country. 

Mr. Choate's retirement from the Senate, at the end 
of the session of 1845, did not release him from occasion- 
al political efforts upon the platform, or from literary 
discourses, for which his services were always in great 
request. 

In the summer of that year he delivered an address 
before the Law School at Cambridge, on the " Position 
and Functions of the American Bar, as an element of 
Conservatism in the State." It is a brilliant, scholarly, 
and wise production. 

Choate's argument in the following January, in the 
United States Supreme Court, in the case of Rhode Island 
against Massachusetts, about the boundary line, is said 
to have been listened to with extreme delight, as almost 
a revelation of subtlety and beauty. But it is stated that 
not a fragment of it remains in any form. Yet Mr. 
Choate spent upon its preparation much time and labor. 

Soon after, in March, 1846, occurred the first of the 
Tirrell trials, of which enough has already been said. 
There remains only a very imperfect newspaper sketch of 
Choate's argument in this case, which no doubt exhibited 
his power over a jury at its high- water mark. In the 



424 EUFUS CHOATE 

Rhode Island and Massachusetts case, Choate was asso- 
ciated with Daniel Webster. In the Oliver Smith Will 
case, at Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1847, Choate led 
for the contestants against Webster, who prevailed, as 
he ought to have done. Both the great lawyers dis- 
played wonderful ability, each according to the exigency 
of his cause. 

Mr. Choate entered into the Presidential contest of 
1848 with great enthusiasm, making a number of very 
brilliant and effective speeches. He was specially de- 
lighted with the election of General Taylor. About the 
same year, 1848, Mr. Choate was invited to accept a pro- 
fessorship in the Dane Law School of Harvard College, 
under very flattering auspices. His biographer is enabled 
to give the circumstances from a narrative furnished him 
by Chief- Justice Shaw, who evidently was the author of 
the project, and himself communicated the suggestion to 
Mr. Choate, of whom he writes as " a candidate offering 
powers of surpassing fitness." It was, in substance, that 
Mr. Choate should remove to Cambridge on assuming the 
duties of the professorship, and give up general practice, 
except an occasional law argument in the Supreme Court 
at Boston or Cambridge. But as a compensation, it was 
proposed so to distribute Mr. Choate 's duties at the 
School as to enable him " to attend the Supreme Court 
of the United States, at Washington, during their whole 
term." Judge Shaw says : — 

The advantages to Mr. Choate seemed obvious. When it 
was previously known that he might be depended on to attend 
at the entire term of the Supreme Court, we supposed he would 
receive a retainer in a large proportion of the cases which would 
go up from New England, and in many important causes from 
all the other States. The effect of this practice upon the emol- 
uments of his profession might be anticipated. . . . The extent 
to which such a practice, with such means, would soon add to 
the solid reputation of Mr. Choate, may easily be conceived, 



RUFUS CHOATE 425 

especially by those who knew the strength of his intellectual 
power, and the keenness of his faculty for discrimination. 

Judge Shaw thus concludes his narrative : — 

Mr. Choate listened to these proposals and discussed them 
freely ; he was apparently much pleased with the brilliant and 
somewhat attractive prospect presented to him by this overture. 
He did not immediately decline the offer, but proposed to take 
it into consideration. Sometime after — perhaps a week — he 
informed me that he could not accede to the proposal. He did 
not state to me his reasons, or if he did, I do not recollect 
them. 

The whole transaction, however, is specially interest- 
ing as showing conclusively the exalted opinion enter- 
tained of Mr. Choate's legal abilities by the great and 
stern " Chief," who, as the undiscerning thought, w T as 
sometimes impatient of his flowery orations, or impas- 
sioned appeals to the jury. Many reasons may be con- 
jectured as dissuading Mr. Choate from accepting the 
invitation to the Law School. Possibly a disinclination 
to teaching, or to the proposed change of residence, — 
certainly, to the suggested absence from home and books 
for a great part of the year. But what a teacher he 
would have made! How persuasively, and with what 
golden-tongued eloquence, he would have guided young 
men toward " the gladsome light of jurisprudence ! ' 

About the same time Mr. Choate declined a seat upon 
the bench of the Supreme Court, tendered him by Gov- 
ernor Briggs, although urged by some friends to accept, 
as a relief from professional labor. But if there were no 
other reason, he was not rich enough to take the place. 

March, 1849, he delivered a lecture before the Mercan- 
tile Library Association, entitled " Thoughts on the New 
England Puritans." In the summer of that year he ar- 
gued at Ipsw T ich — with, it is said, " consummate skill and 
eloquence" — the Phillips Will case, involving a very large 
estate, in which he was entirely successful. Yet not a 



426 RUFUS CHOATE 

fragment of his great argument remains. Let us record 
the names of counsel, for men so varied and great in 
ability are rarely associated. For the heirs-at-law, were 
W. H. Gardiner, Joel Parker, and Sidney Bartlett ; for 
the executors, Rufus Choate, Benjamin R. Curtis, and 
Otis P. Lord. 

All this time Mr. Choate kept up his private studies, as 
his journals show. He was still anxious to accomplish 
some literary labor, " which may do good when I am not 
known, and live when I shall have ceased to live, — 
a thoughtful and soothing and rich printed page." He 
mentions some single topics which he desired to treat : — 

The Greek orators before Lysias and Isocrates — Demos- 
thenes, iEschines, Thuc} 7 dides, the Odyssey, Tacitus, Juvenal, 
Pope — supply them at once ; Rhetoric, the conservatism of the 
bar, my unpublished orations, the times, politics, reminiscences, 
— suggest others, — Cicero and Burke, Tiberius in Tacitus, and 
Suetonius, and De Quincy. But why enumerate ? The litera- 
ture of this century to the death of Scott or Moore, — so grand, 
rich, and passionate. 

He recurs again to his project of a History of the Con- 
stitution of the United States, — a scheme which was also 
a favorite aspiration of Daniel Webster, who indeed once 
got so far as to commence the dictation of an outline of 
his plan. Mr. Choate also cherished the notion of writing 
the History of Ancient Greece, as we have seen by the 
extracts from his journal. His biographer says he prob- 
ably did not relinquish that idea until the appearance of 
Grote's History. Later he hoped, at least, to prepare a 
volume of Essays, and even wrote a paper for Introduc- 
tion to such a work, under the title of " Vacations," at 
the close of which he says he was " willing that others 
should know that the time which I have withheld from 
society, from the pursuit of wealth, from pleasure, and 
latterly from public affairs, has not been idle or misspent : 
non otiosa vita; nee desidiosa occupatio." Such scraps and 



RUFUS CHOATE 427 

fragments are all that remain of so much reading, thought, 
and aspiration. But the reason is given in an incident 
recorded by his biographer. He once told Judge Warren 
that he was going to write a book. " Ah," said the Judge, 
" What is it to be ? " " Well," replied Mr. Choate, " I 've 
got as far as the titlepage and a motto." "What are 
they?" "The subject is the Lawyer's Vacation; the 
motto — I 've forgotten. But I shall show that the law- 
yer's vacation is the space between the questions put to 
a witness and the answer." 

In 1850 Mr. Choate, strenuously impelled by the state 
of his health, permitted himself a long-desired trip to 
Europe, in company with an old friend and well-known 
lawyer, the Hon. Joseph Bell, who married a sister of 
Mrs. Choate. They were absent three months, visiting 
England, Belgium, France, a part of Germany, and Switz- 
erland. His journal and letters show how much he en- 
joyed, in spite of ill health and fatigue. In travel he 
still kept up his studies : — 

This, lest taste should sleep and die, for which no compen- 
sations can pay. . . . For all the rest, I mean to give it heartily, 
variously, to what travel can teach, — men, opinions, places, — 
with great effort to be up to my real power of acquiring and 
imparting. This journey shall not leave me where it finds me : 
better, stronger, knowing more. One page of some law-book 
daily I shall read. 

London, Paris, Waterloo, Geneva, Cambridge, by his 
associations, were as familiar to him almost as Cornhill 
and Court Square. And at Basle he writes, in lines he 
expected no eye would see till his own were closed in 
death : — 

Political life forever is ended. Henceforth the law and lit- 
erature are all. I know it must be so, and I yield and I 
approve. Some memorial I would yield yet, rescued from the 
grave of a mere professional man, some wise or beautiful or 
interesting page, — something of utility to America, which I 
love more, every pulse that beats. 



428 RUFUS CHOATE 

When, in 1850, Professor Webster was indicted for the 
murder of Dr. Parkman, it was generally supposed that 
Mr. Choate would defend him, and it is now known that he 
was invited and persistently urged to do so, and that very 
liberal fees were tendered him for the service. Franklin 
Dexter, a distinguished lawyer, who had himself defended 
John Francis Knapp at Salem twenty years before, visited 
Mr. Choate by appointment, and presented the merits of 
Professor Webster's case for several hours. Mr. Choate 
listened without interruption till Mr. Dexter had quite 
concluded, and then said, " Brother Dexter, how do you 
answer this question, — and this ? ' Mr. Dexter never an- 
swered those questions, but turned the conversation, and 
took his leave. From Judge Otis P. Lord's account of a 
conversation with Mr. Choate, it is very evident he would 
not have consented to defend Professor Webster except 
upon the theory of justifiable homicide in self-defence, or 
manslaughter occurring in sudden altercation. That de- 
fence might possibly have been successful. 

Governor Clifford, who acted for a long time as prosecut- 
ing attorney and then as attorney-general, wrote that he 
believed " Mr. Choate at times accepted retainers in crimi- 
nal causes from a conscientious conviction of duty, when 
the service to be performed was utterly repugnant and 
distasteful to him. ... He felt that he was not at liberty, 
when pressed by the friends of parties accused of crime, to 
refuse his services to submit their defence to the proper 
tribunal," in accordance with his own theory of a proper 
defence. But he gladly accepted the appointment of at- 
torney-general from Governor Clifford in 1853, because it 
would operate as his release from the disagreeable duty 
of accepting retainers in criminal causes. As attorney- 
general he was dignified and impressive, seeming ever to 
hold his fervid temperament and wonderful gift of impas- 
sioned eloquence in check, lest he should urge too hardly 
upon the accused. He would not press an indictment for 



RUFUS CHOATE 429 

the sake of victory. He has left on record his own deep 
sense of his responsibility while attorney-general. It is 
the impression of one who improved every available op- 
portunity of observing him in his official capacity, that he 
discharged its duties under a sense of self-constraint, and 
gladly put them aside, at the expiration of a single year, 
as if he were laying away the robe of an honorable servi- 
tude, and was himself again. 

From 1834 to 1849 Mr. Choate's professional partner 
in business was B. F. Crowninshield, Esq. It is said 
there never was any division of earnings between them, 
nor any disagreement. In the latter year he took into 
partnership his son-in-law, Joseph M. Bell, Esq., who re- 
mained with him till his death, and is understood to have 
been of much service to him in systematizing his business, 
and raising his scale of professional charges, which had 
been at first ridiculously low. Mr. Choate was habitually 
careless of money and of pecuniary interests, although 
his many years of untiring labor for his clients were at 
last rewarded by a bare competency. Horace H. Day, 
his client in the rubber-cases, wrote : " I have employed 
many lawyers, but I have had but one lawyer who was 
wholly unselfish, and that was Rufus Choate." He once 
kept a book of office-accounts, in which he entered, as 
the first item, " office, debtor to one quart of oil, 37^ 
cents." Six months after, he made another entry. This 
was the last. The size of the fee received made no dif- 
ference to him as to the amount of labor to be bestowed 
on a cause. He did his utmost in every case ; he could 
not do more in any. He gave away and lent money to 
everybody who asked him, if he had money to give or 
lend. In his early years he often forgot to make charges, 
and to collect them when made. Under the fostering 
care of Mr. Bell, the average annual receipts of his office, 
from 1849 to 1859 inclusive, were nearly $18,000. In 
1852 they were more than $20,000; in 1855 nearly 



430 RUFUS CHOATE 

$21,000; in 1856 over $22,000. His largest fee was 
$2,500. During these eleven years his actual trials and 
arguments amounted to an annual average of nearly 
seventy, — some of them, of course, consuming many 
days. 

It is pleasant to read that he always refused, and never 
accepted, any compensation for political speeches. He 
prided himself on his honor and purity in his relations 
to the State. 

One of the best-known cases with which Mr. Choate was 
connected in his later years was Fairchild vs. Adams, an 
action for written and verbal slander by one clergyman 
against another. Mr. Choate defended successfully the 
Rev. Dr. Nehemiah Adams, who was his own pastor. In 
May, 1851, he argued the Methodist Church case in the 
Circuit Court of the United States in New York. March, 
1852, he argued the great rubber-cases in the United 
States Court, in Trenton, New Jersey. In 1857 he exhib- 
ited all his wondrous resources of wit and wisdom, elo- 
quence and pathos, in the Dalton Divorce case. 

Reference has been heretofore made to the vast influ- 
ence exerted by Daniel Webster over the career of Rnfus 
Choate. Choate had — for reasons, some of which have 
been suggested — regarded Mr. Webster from his youth 
with affectionate veneration. He loved him with an almost 
filial devotion ; and Mr. Webster seems to have recipro- 
cated this warmth of feeling, loyally. Webster's was the 
masterful nature, and Mr. Choate appears, in political 
affairs, to have been quite content to follow his lead, but 
not with any servile devotion, still less with any selfish 
feeling. President Fillmore, indeed, is understood — in 

O 7 7 

1851, perhaps at the request of Mr. Webster, then Secre- 
tary of State — to have offered Mr. Choate the place made 
vacant by the death of Mr. Justice Woodbury of the 
United States Supreme Court, but it was declined. In 
the court-room Choate was too loyal to the interests of his 



RTJFUS CHOATE 431 

client to yield to Mr. Webster aught but the deference 
clue to his age and great professional eminence. But in 
1850, after the 7th of March Speech, Choate never fal- 
tered, but with unsurpassed chivalry followed the great 
chieftain forth into the dark storm of obloquy and re- 
proach that burst upon him. He sought no exemption 
on the ground of his genuine retirement from political 
life, but voluntarily sought the battle where the blows 
fell fastest. November 26, 1850, he spoke at a Union 
Meeting in Faneuil Hall; and, February 22, 1851, on 
Washington's Birthday, he delivered an address, the 
scope of which was largely in support of the sentiment 
which Mr. Webster deemed it most important at that 
moment to inculcate. Again, in July of the same year, 
he addressed the Story Association, of the Dane Law 
School, in a similar strain, — though, of course, with the 
most careful observance of the proprieties of a scholastic 
anniversary. November 25, 1851, a great meeting was 
held in Faneuil Hall by the Massachusetts friends of Mr. 
Webster, to present him to the country as a candidate for 
the Presidency. No one who listened to Mr. Choate's 
great effort on that occasion can fail to remember it as a 
tender, glowing, yet high-reasoned, lofty, and wonderfully 
effective panegyric. Scarcely any man ever deserved 
such a tribute ; perhaps no man beside Webster ever had 
such a eulogist. 

Mr. Choate's labors in behalf of Mr. Webster in the 
last Whig National Convention, at Baltimore, in June, 
1852, are well known, and his disappointment at the 
result was intense. But we have his own declaration, 
made after Mr. Webster's death, that he should vote for 
General Scott for the Presidency. He remained in the 
Whig party till its practical dissolution, but in 1856 sup- 
ported Mr. Buchanan as the nominee of the Democratic 
party, — making a speech in Lowell in his behalf, under 
somewhat remarkable circumstances, as the candidate of a 



432 RUFUS CHOATE 

national, in opposition to what he considered a sectional, 
party. This was his last strictly political effort, — al- 
though in 1858 he delivered a Fourth-of-July oration, 
before the Boston Young Men's Democratic Club, upon 
" American Nationality ; its Nature, some of its Condi- 
tions, and some of its Ethics." Nationality and the Pre- 
servation of the Union was the key-note to all Rufus 
Choate said and did about politics in his later years. No 
explanation of any apparent inconsistency in his course 
is necessary, and his sharpest critics of that turbulent era 
would doubtless now concede his perfect integrity and 
high-minded devotion to what he deemed a righteous 
cause. 

In August, 1852, Mr. Choate delivered an oration be- 
fore the Phi Beta Kappa Society of the University of 
Vermont; also, at later periods, various lectures and 
addresses. The most important literary labor, however, 
was his eulogy on Daniel Webster at Dartmouth College 
in 1853, in which he has embodied all that he had seen 
or thought of his great master. After the criticism of 
thirty years, it remains a very noble production. In the 
same year Mr. Choate was a member of the Massachusetts 
Constitutional Convention. He made speeches on the 
Basis of Representation and on the Judiciary. The last 
is a fine specimen of practical and persuasive eloquence, 
well worthy of study. 

It is not necessary to go farther with details. Such as 
Mr. Choate's life had been, it continued till, as was inevi- 
table, his health broke down finally in the early summer 
of 1859. Determining to pass the season in England, he 
sailed from Boston, June 29, 1859 ; but, becoming worse, 
he left the ship at Halifax, where he died July 13, not yet 
sixty years old, worn out. In those last days he heard 
the books read that he loved best, — Shakespeare, Bacon, 
Macaulay, Gray, Luther, the Bible. He looked out upon 
the sea, where to his soul so much "Romance" hovered. 



RUFUS CHOATE 433 

He said : " If a schooner or sloop goes by, don't disturb 
me ; but if there is a square-rigged vessel, wake me up." 
His much-beloved son Rufus was with him, and received 
his last sigh. His remains were brought back to Boston, 
and buried at Mount Auburn. 

Reference must be made, in a single line, to the many 
public meetings held in his honor, and the numerous beau- 
tiful, eloquent, and heartfelt tributes paid his worth and 
genius. They were offerings tendered, not to wealth or 
high station, but to a beautiful life, adorned by splendid 
powers, conscientiously employed. 

In the preparation of this imperfect memorial, constant 
use has been made of that excellent book, " The Life 
of Rufus Choate," by Professor Samuel Gilman Brown. 
Edward G. Parker published a volume of " Reminis- 
cences." Edwin P. Whipple has written much and dis- 
criminatingly of Choate. James T. Fields, Causten 
Browne, Irving Browne, George S. Boutwell, and others 
have written or delivered essays or lectures. The Albany 
Law Journal, in 1877 and 1878, published a series of 
interesting sketches, edited by Judge Neilson of Brooklyn. 
The bar is still full of stories of Choate's wit and quick- 
ness and eloquence, mostly spoiled in the telling. 

Mr. Whipple says that in his youth Choate's "face 
almost realized the ideal of manly beauty." As most 
remember him, it was sad, strange, deeply lined, but 
lighted up by a great eye, susceptible to express all of 
triumph or of pathos. 

As has been intimated more than once, Mr. Choate's 
great pleasure was in buying and reading books. His 
private library contained seven thousand, his law library 
three thousand volumes. About his unintelligible hand- 
writing many jokes were made, and he made more than 
anybody else. To the young he was uniformly kind, and 
the Junior Bar found him always gracious and benignant. 
There were many who said, " He is the best senior coun- 

28 



434 EUFUS CnOATE 

sel that ever lived." At his home and with his family 
he was playful, gay, and affectionate. There seems no 
question that his temper was amiable. Above all things 
he was placable and magnanimous. Mr. Choate's wit, 
like his mind, w r as full of subtlety, delicacy, and unex- 
pectedness. His witticisms must, of all men's, lose in 
repetition ; to set them out in cold print is like breaking 
a butterfly ; yet even so, some of them are delicious. 

There is a portrait by Ames, at Dartmouth College, a 
bust by Thomas Ball, and an engraving from a photo- 
graph in Professor Brown's volume, — very like Mr. 
Choate in his last years. 

By his marriage with Helen Olcott, March 29, 1825, 
Rufus Choate had children : (1.) Catherine Bell, born May 
26, 1826 ; died May 24, 1830. (2.) An infant child, bom 
Oct. 25, 1828;' died Oct. 25, 1828. (3.) Helen Olcott, 
born May 2, 1830 ; married Joseph M. Bell, who died 
Sept. 10, 1868: they had no children. (4.) Sarah, born 
Dec. 15, 1831; died' March 11, 1875. (5.) Rufus, born 
May 14, 1834; died Jan. 15, 1866. (6.) Miriam Foster, 
born Oct. 2, 1835; married Edward Ellerton Pratt: they 
have two children, — Helen Choate, who married Charles 
A. Prince, June, 1881, and Alice Ellerton, unmarried. 
(7.) Caroline, born Sept. 15, 1837; died Dec. 12, 1840. 
Mrs. Bell and Mrs. Pratt are the only surviving children 
of Mr. Choate. Charles A. and Helen Choate Prince have 
a child, Helen Choate, born April 6, 1882. 

There remains no space, nor is there any necessit}^, to 
attempt an analysis of Mr. Choate's intellectual charac- 
teristics or attainments. Copious extracts have been 
made from his journals, so that the reader for himself 
can observe Choate's process for the building of a mind. 
From the time he learned his letters, till the hour of his 
death, he read the best books, and remembered an un- 
usual portion of what he read. Thus he acquired remark- 
able knowledge, particularly in the direction of general 



KUFUS OHOATE 435 

and political history. The classics he loved, and studied 
assiduously. Poetry, romance, biography had fascinations 
for him ; so had moral and mental philosophy. Thus his 
mind became stored with useful facts and beautiful images, 
his style grew rich and exuberant. His fancy was vivid, 
and his imagination prolific. Nature had given him many 
gifts for an orator. He had an attractive presence, great 
personal magnetism, a voice deep, rich, pathetic, an eye 
wooing, winning, magical ; above all, he had the inde- 
scribable, kindling, swaying temperament that is born, not 
made. His earliest efforts, on the rostrum and at the bar, 
proclaim his possession of these beautiful endowments ; but 
his style tended to extravagance, was even bizarre. That 
was the turning-point of his career. Would he rest satis- 
fied with nature's gifts ? On the other hand, he sought the 
best models, to chasten as well as to enrich his style. He 
studied law as an exact science. If he did not become a 
learned lawyer, his acquisitions were at least competent 
for his purpose as a consummate advocate. He got to be 
a master of logic. Nobody was keener, for analysis or 
for 'discrimination. He exhausted the law of every case 
which he investigated. He argued to the jury just as 
the jury ought to be addressed, and he reasoned to the 
court in the highest and most effective manner. If, in his 
early manhood, anybody queried if he were a good law- 
yer, that doubt was laid at rest long before his death ; 
and, upon the whole, it may be safely said that, for all sorts 
of cases, he was not alone the most brilliant advocate at 
the American Bar, but excelled by none in efficiency. 

Through life Mr. Choate was governed by deep reli- 
gious feeling and respect for things sacred ; but he was 
never a member of any church. Like most men edu- 
cated under Puritan influences, he never escaped entirely 
from the impressions of his youth. 

He was admitted an honorary member of the New Eng- 
land Historic Genealogical Society, September 10, 1817. 



436 RUFUS CHOATE 

Choate worked too hard and suffered the consequences 
in ill health, and positive pain and suffering ; but it may 
be supposed his life was, on the whole, self-rewarding. 
He had ever before himself an ideal of excellence, — to 
make the most of himself, and, under all circumstances, 
to do the best possible. Can such a life be unhappy? 
He had, too, high consolations and noble pleasures ever 
at his command. Read that beautiful passage in which 
he himself has described the exhausted lawyer come home 
to his library : — 

With a superhuman effort he opens his book, and in the 
twinkling of an eye he is looking into the full " orb of Homeric 
or Miltonic song ; " or he stands in the crowd — breathless, 
yet swayed as forests or the sea by winds — hearing and to 
judge the Pleadings for the Crown ; or the philosophy which 
soothed Cicero or Boethius in their afflictions, in exile, prison, 
and the contemplations of death, breathes over his petty cares 
like the sweet South ; or Pope or Horace laughs him into good 
humor ; or he walks with iEneas or the Sibyl in the mid-light 
of the world of the laurelled dead ; and the court-house is as 
completely forgotten as the dreams of a pre-Adamite life. Well 
may he prize that endeared charm, so effectual and safe, without 
which the brain had long ago been chilled by paralysis or set 
on fire of insanity ! 



So < 



V <. 



MEMOIR 



OF 



RUFUS CHOATE 



BY 



JOHN B. D. COGSWELL 



